Northampton, Mass. – The Mount Holyoke tennis team opened up the 2018 Seven Sister's Championship with a pair of losses against Wellesley College and Vassar College on Saturday. With the wins, the Blue improve to 3-0, while the Brewers jump to 4-1. The Lyons are now 1-3 after the first day of action.
Action began on the singles court where Wellesley swept all three games to give the Blue a three 3-0 advantage. Blue first year Lizzy Kong (Mason, Ohio) opened singles with a 6-4, 6-0 win over junior Madison Rosen (Portland, Ore./Grant) at number three. Junior Justine Huang (Coto de Caza, Calif.Tesoro) then defeated Mount Holyoke's Ching-Ching Huang (Lukang Township, Taiwan/Taipei Municipal First Girls' HS) at the top of the ladder, winning 6-0, 6-3, before sophomore Selina Peng (Taichung, Taiwan/Morrison Academy Taichung) closed out the Wellesley win with a 6-1, 6-3 win at number two singles, defeating MHC senior Ishita Tibrewal (Kolkata, India/Modern High School for Girls).
MHC sophomore Catherine Peabody (San Francisco, Calif./Lick-Wilmerding HS) and first year Anya Gerasimova (Salem, Ore./West Salem)had a solid win in the first of two eight-point pro set doubles match-ups. The duo defeated Blue first years Michelle Buyer (Wilmette, Ill./New Trier) and Lily Chu (Princeton, N.J./Montgomery) to make it 3-1, but Wellesley took the final game to make secure a 4-1 victory.
In the afternoon match with Vassar, the Brewers jumped out to a quick lead at number two doubles as senior Dasha Ivenitsky and freshman Sarra Yekta beat Rosen and junior Joy Maran (Santa Fe, N.M./Santa Fe Prep) with an 8-1 win. The match got intense as each of the last four matches needed tie-breaks to decide the winner. In the number one doubles position, sophomore Tara Edwards (Littleton./Colorado Academy) and Morgane Flournoy (Grosse Pointe, Mich./Grosse Pointe South) defeated Huang and Tibrewal 9-8, claiming the tiebreaker 7-4 to put the Brewers up 2-0 going into singles. In individual action, first year Meghan Rodick dropped the opening set to Peabody 6-2, but cam back with a 7-5 second set win to force a super-tiebreaker. Once there, Rodick controlled the extra set with a 10-2 win.
The Brewers got another tough win at number two singles, as senior Courtney Geiss earned a 6-2 first-set win, but saw Gerasimova respond with a 6-4 triumph in the second. In the tiebreaker, Geiss pulled away to pick up the 10-6 win and the match. In the final singles performance, sophomore Ashley Fair won six of the seven games in the first set, but the Wang registered a 7-5 win in the second to send the match to another tie-breaker. Vassar went on to earn the win to finish off a 5-0 match victory.
Mount Holyoke continues Seven Sister's action tomorrow, where they will face Bryn Mawr College at 8:30am and Smith College at 1:30pm.
